


Octopus

by anaer



Category: Kingdom Hearts
Genre: Established Relationship, Humor, Living Together, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-19
Updated: 2016-12-19
Packaged: 2018-09-09 20:00:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,823
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8910040
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/anaer/pseuds/anaer
Summary: Squall Leonhart was pissed at him.  Why?  Cloud wasn’t sure.  But at some point between the amazing date night before celebrating one month of finally living together, and waking up this past morning, he had done something to end up on Leon’s bad side.





	

Something was up.  Cloud was sure of it.  He’d been sure of it since he’d woken this morning in his very comfortable bed and untangled himself from his very comfortable boyfriend and leaned in for a very pleasant good morning kiss and been cruelly, cruelly rebuffed by the rather surly other man.  He had, in fact, been shoved away with such force that he’d fallen off the bed.  If Cloud were a lesser man – specifically, a man who hadn’t been forced by Aerith to attend anger management classes twice a week for the past eight months – there might have been some form of retaliation.  Instead, he took a few deep breaths, counted to one hundred in his head, and then imagined violently murdering Sephiroth in several different and increasingly gruesome ways.  The inner peace he achieved when Sephiroth’s imaginary head finally separated from his imaginary body was unlike anything else.  The only thing that could have made Cloud’s zen state better would have been if his usually loving boyfriend had reacted like normal and actually acknowledged his existence beyond a faint “good morning” at all during breakfast.  Or the following few hours working on the castle repairs.  Or when Cloud tried to cop a feel during lunch.  But all of that had gotten him nothing, which left Cloud with only one conclusion:

Squall Leonhart was pissed at him.  That, or more likely, Leon was trying _not_ to be pissed at him and failing spectacularly. 

Why?  Cloud wasn’t sure.  But at some point between the amazing date night before celebrating one month of finally living together, and waking up this past morning, he had done something to end up on Leon’s bad side. 

But considering he had pretty much crashed last night, he had no idea what it could possibly be. And the flash of irritation that welled up in Leon’s rather strained looking eyes every time Cloud approached him to talk about it had put a damper on finding out what could possibly be the problem from the source.  Which meant Cloud had no choice but to rely on other, more underhanded, but also less reliable tactics. 

“I mean, yeah, I’ll tell you what you wanna know, but it’s gonna cost you.”  The teen in front of him wore a look so smug that it set Cloud on edge.  The silver hair probably didn’t help any, nor did the way the boy sat on the short wall of the bailey, tempting Cloud to push him over and off the side entirely.  Watching the kid splat at the bottom of the steps would bring Cloud a tad more satisfaction than he was entirely comfortable admitting.

“How much, Riku?”

“2000 munny.”

Cloud narrowed his eyes.  Riku smirked smugly back up at him. 

“That’s extortion.”

“I mean, hey, you don’t have to pay it if you don’t want, but if you want to know what I know then I need fair compensation, and I’ve had my eye on some upgrades over at the item shop for a while now.  So.”  Cloud scowled, but dug out his wallet anyway. 

Riku’s grin grew as he grabbed the money.  He looked for a second like he was about to smell it, but instead it disappeared into one of his oversized pockets.  “Great.  Well.  Basically, Sora told me that he was up in Ansem’s office at the castle yesterday to go visit Tron, only he got distracted talking to Cid who was up there fixing a glitch in the town defense system, so he ended up running late and overhearing Leon talking to Aerith.  I mean, then Leon saw Sora of course, because Sora’s got all the subtlety of a brick smashing through a window on the best of days, and he made him promise not to tell anyone what he’d heard – _especially_ not you – so you didn’t get this from me.  Because Leon would be very disappointed at Sora, which will put him in a bad mood, and then he’ll take it out on me, and I’d rather not have that.”

Cloud stared at him blankly.  “Could you just get to the point?”  Before I knock you out and take my money back, he added silently.  Riku seemed to sense the vibe, though, and scooted away from him before continuing. 

“Leon hates living with you and doesn’t know how to tell you.”  Cloud paused.  He frowned.  He thought it over, and frowned some more.  That didn’t make any sense.  Leon loved living with him.  He’d indicated as much, more or less.  Maybe not with actual, articulated words, but very little between them was said with actual, articulated words. 

“What?” he finally asked.  “What do you mean?”

“I mean, he _hates_ living with you.  Don’t get me wrong – or Sora wrong, this is all from him – he loves _you_ , and most things about you, he just hates existing in a shared space with you for any extended period of time and it has apparently been driving him more and more crazy.”

“That doesn’t make any sense.”

Riku raised an eyebrow.  “What doesn’t make sense about that?”

“I am a fucking fantastic roommate.”

“Yeah, well, your boyfriend doesn’t seem to agree.”

But Cloud wasn’t paying attention anymore.  Leon didn’t like living with him?  He wasn’t exaggerating when he said he was a fantastic roommate.  He kept the place clean, he kept the noise down, he provided pretty regular sex – he was a dream to live with.  Zack had assured him of that on multiple occasions in the past.  Which meant there was something else at work here, something he wasn’t seeing…

He needed Tifa.

Unfortunately, Tifa happened to be out of town for the night, on another world to set up some business, so Cloud spent most of the evening down in the Dark Depths killing any kind of monster that crossed his path and fervently hoping that Sephiroth would show up.  Sephiroth, of course, did not. 

By the time Cloud made it home it was after sundown.  The place he and Leon had picked was an unassuming one-bedroom cottage a few streets back from the market.  It wasn’t much – just the essentials.  But it was far enough away that Yuffie wouldn’t be barging in on them every second of the day.  It was also a good deal better than sharing Merlin’s place with four, sometimes five other people had been, or, in Cloud’s case, bumming around the half-built castle at night because he didn’t want to deal with anyone.  They’d moved in the same day construction had finished. 

Unsurprisingly, there was a plate of food sitting out on the kitchen counter for him.  Leon had been thoughtful enough to bring him home some of whatever Aerith had cooked up for the restoration committee for dinner, as he tended to.  So he couldn’t be _too_ mad. But then – and this _was_ surprising – Cloud found himself in an empty house, eating dinner by himself.  And cleaning up by himself.  And reading by himself.  He had just resigned himself to the possibility of having sex by himself when the front door clicked open and Leon walked in and stopped. 

“Oh,” Leon coughed.  “Cloud.  You’re, uh…still awake.”

“Was waiting for you,” Cloud shrugged.  Leon nodded faintly, but didn’t say anything else.  Instead, he closed the door behind him.  He looked beyond exhausted, Cloud noticed.  But, more importantly, he was refusing to look at Cloud.  Which was…weird.  To say the least.  But then, this whole day was weird. 

“I was getting ready to head to bed, if you wanted to join me,” Cloud offered.  And that was when Leon himself went weird. 

“No!” the man exclaimed, voice half strangled, but that was enough to make Leon actually look at the blonde.  Cloud looked back at him strangely. 

“What?”

Leon cleared his throat and abruptly tried to reclaim his usual veneer of cool.  “I mean…I have some…stuff…to take care of still.  I’ll probably just sleep out here tonight. On the couch.” 

Cloud raised an eyebrow.  “On the couch?”

Leon gave a somewhat jerky nod, again proceeding to look anywhere but at Cloud. 

“On this couch here?  The one that’s not even comfortable to sit on?”

Now Leon was scowling.  “ _Yes_.” 

Maybe Riku was right, Cloud suddenly thought.  The urge to demand answers sat at the tip of his tongue, but he squashed it down.  If he suddenly outright accused Leon of hating living with him, Leon would either deflect and deny or be the blunt asshole he could be at times and straight up say ‘yes’.  Or just get pissed at Sora, which would put Riku in the doghouse, which went against the promise he had made the teen.  So, for now, Cloud held his tongue.  Instead, he stood up slowly and approached his rather irritable lover. 

“Why are you mad,” he demanded, rather than asked. 

“I’m not.” Leon’s words said one thing, but his face and body language said a whole other, if the way he suddenly crossed his arms was anything to go by.

“You’ve barely spoken to me today, you pushed me out of the bed when I went to kiss you this morning, you stayed out all evening, and now you look exhausted but you’re opting to sleep out here on that piece of rock rather than in the room with me.  Why the hell are you mad at me, Squall.”  And now Leon’s jaw had acquired a tick, the one he got when he was grinding his teeth.

Again he repeated – and this time slower, taking the time to annunciate each word, “I am not mad at you.” 

“Then come to bed with me,” Cloud ordered. 

“No,” Leon snapped. 

“Then tell me what your problem is.”

“I don’t have a problem.”

“Which is why you’ll barely even look at me.”

“Whatever,” Leon muttered, his go-to when he didn’t have a rebuttal but wanted the conversation ended anyway.  That pretty much signified that he wasn’t going to get so much as another word out of the man tonight, not without some kind of extreme tactic akin to pulling teeth. Therefore, he was totally justified in what he did next.  And he explained as much to Aerith the next day when she let herself in to find out why Leon had shown up pissed off in the middle of the night to stay with her because Cloud had cast firaga on the couch.

“Let me get this straight,” Tifa began slowly, staring at her friend like he was the dumbest person in all the worlds.  Which, admittedly, he was.  “Leon was being unreasonable, so you set the couch on fire?”

“He hates me, Tifa,” Cloud groused into his arms.  He was the only person seated in the whole bar, which wasn’t surprising considering that Tifa had only gotten back to Radiant Garden about an hour ago. She hadn’t had time to officially open 7th Heaven yet, but she had arrived to find a rather distraught Cloud at her doorstep, and ever a sucker, she had been unable to turn him away. 

“You set your _couch_ on fire.”

“It was a piece of shit anyway.”

“If he wasn’t mad at you before, you can be sure he’s absolutely pissed at you now,” Tifa stated rather bluntly.  She leaned over and poked his cheek, but he didn’t lift his head even a little bit.

“He hates living with me,” Cloud bemoaned. 

“Gee, I wonder why.”

Now Cloud did lift his head, but only enough to shoot her with a piercing glare.  The black-haired woman stared back, not cowed in the least.  They held their staring contest for a good two minutes, before Tifa finally closed her eyes and shrugged, releasing a huge, exasperated sigh.

“The both of you are the worst,” she announced.  “You’re both grown ass men with the emotional capacity of five year olds.  How you’ve ever managed to make a relationship work, I will never understand.”

Cloud, predictably, ignored everything she had just said.  “Aerith wouldn’t even tell me what his issue is.  I know she knows.”

“That’s because Aerith is a sensible human being who knows you’ll probably overreact to whatever it is.  I mean, did you ever stop to think that maybe Leon hasn’t told you what’s bothering him because he also knows that you’ll overreact?  And that’s why he’s irritable?”

“I don’t overreact.”

“You set your couch on fire.” Which was a valid point.  Not that he was willing to admit that.

“How do I get him to talk to me?”

“Well, if I were you, I’d start by apologising.”

And that was how Cloud found himself here.  Here being the castle, hovering outside the door to Ansem’s study where he knew his rather pernickety boyfriend waited inside.  The glitch with the defense system still hadn’t resolved itself, and Cid and Leon had been holed up inside the computer room all day, according to Tifa.   He himself had been standing here for quite some time, working up the desire to actually go in there and confront Leon.  It wasn’t so much the apology that was the problem – Cloud was mature enough and had sat through enough of Aerith’s talks to own up to his mistakes – as it was the lingering thought in the back of his mind rehashing what Riku had told him over and over again, an endless loop of relationship destruction.  The way Leon had acted last night hadn’t done anything to help that. 

And it was going to be even harder to find out for sure now.

Not that Cloud could blame him.  Were the shoe on the other foot, well…Cloud couldn’t say he wouldn’t act exactly the same way.  Tifa wasn’t the only one who wondered how the two of them had managed to splice together a mostly healthy, functioning relationship.   

And then the door in front of him yanked open, revealing a bubbly, laughing Sora, and a rather amused Riku, halting mid-conversation. 

“Oh, hey, Cloud!” Sora greeted cheerfully.  “If you’re looking for Leon – oh.  Wait.”  The smile on his face dimmed a shade, which could only mean bad things.  “Cloud.  Um…yeah.  So.  I don’t know if you really want to talk to him right now…He’s been kind of in a bad mood all day.  Like.  He actually snapped at _me_.”  Sora looked genuinely perturbed by the thought, but Cloud was unmoved.  Honestly, he was surprised it had taken so long for Leon to finally crack around Sora, because as much as Leon loved the affable boy, Sora also sent his frustration levels through the roof on the best of days. 

“We heard about the couch,” Riku added unhelpfully. 

“Is he the only one still here?” Cloud opted to ask, rather than acknowledge what either Sora or Riku had said. 

“Yeah, Cid left a bit ago,” Sora replied.  “Leon’s just working out a few more kinks with Tron before he reboots the system.” 

“He kicked us out,” Riku again added, again unhelpfully. 

Cloud was in no way bitter at Riku, or put off by his shiny silver hair.  His fist remained clenched at his side in trepidation, and not in an effort to resist the urge to pull out his giant ass sword and cleave the keyblade wielder in two.

…He probably needed to work on his anger management a bit more. 

With a deep, fortifying breath, Cloud stepped forward and ventured into the office, ignoring the “Good luck!” that Sora tossed after him. 

Leon was, as predicted, standing in front of the computer.  He glanced up at the sound of Cloud’s footsteps, and a glower spread across his face.  The man turned back to the computer and started punching in letters with a barely concealed ferocity. 

“Squall,” Cloud greeted. 

“Leon,” he corrected without a glance.  That was as sure a sign that he was pissed as anything else.  Cloud felt an angry twitch develop in his eye, but suppressed it.  He was in the wrong here.  At least partially. He could fix this.

“Can we talk?”

“No.” 

“I thought you weren’t mad.”  Now Leon did look up, if only so that he could shoot the most malicious glare he could muster at Cloud.  Which, given that it was Squall Leonhart, was pretty malicious.  Cloud actually felt intimidated for a second before he remembered he was a superhumanly strong freak of nature and also the love of Leon’s life and therefore relatively safe from harm.  Hopefully.

Leon _had_ been strangely attached to that rock of a couch.

Clearly more attached to it than he was to Cloud.

“I wasn’t,” Leon replied, voice low.  “Until last night.”

Cloud cleared his throat.  “Tifa pointed out to me that I may have…overreacted.” 

Leon turned to Cloud fully. “May have?  _May_ have overreacted?  You burned down my couch!"

“ _Our_ couch.  We needed a new one anyway.” Flippant was never the way to go, but in Cloud’s defense, he really, really hated that couch. 

“ _My_ couch, Cloud!  I bought it!  I use it! I sleep on it!”

“It’s not like you don’t have a bed!” Cloud shouted.  And then, before he could stop himself, “Or do you really hate living with me that much!”

Leon stopped at that, and that weird look from last night was back on his face before it scrunched itself up into confusion.  Which, Cloud had to admit, was a good step up from anger, even if Leon’s tended to function on a slow burn that could be left to simmer for a while while he addressed other issues.  “What are you talking about?” he asked.  “I don’t hate _living_ with you. Who told you that?  Is that why you’re being weird?”

Cloud huffed, offended, and stomped over to his boyfriend.  “ _I’m_ being weird?  You’re the one who was ‘not mad’ yesterday!  You wouldn’t even just tell me what the hell your problem is!”

“Because you overreact!”

 “I do not – okay.  Who cares.  I do.  I overreact, fine, but what else am I supposed to think?!”

Leon took a deep breath and closed his eyes, and Cloud could see the mental counting going through his boyfriend’s head. 

“Just tell me what’s wrong,” Cloud demanded once more, interrupting Leon’s bid for his happy place. Letting out a breath, the brunette attempted to leave.  Unfortunately, the door was past where Cloud was standing, so he managed to grab Squall’s arm before he could go by.

“Just tell me!”

“You!” Leon finally exploded.  “You are what’s wrong!  I don’t hate living with you – I hate _sleeping_ with you!”

Cloud froze, and then laughed.  He burst into laughter, the type that anyone outside of this room would’ve died of shock to see, except for one Zack Fair, wherever he happened to be living somewhere out in all the worlds.  But the fact remained that Cloud could laugh on occasion, and he took this opportunity to indulge, because how could he not at the complete ridiculousness of Leon’s words? 

Laughing was, predictably, a terrible response, and Leon stood there, still fuming. 

“You love having sex with me,” Cloud finally managed, dabbing at the tears forming in his eyes.

Leon’s whole body was tense.  For a second, Cloud thought Leon would shut down again, like usual.  He was, instead, surprised by what happened next:

“I’m not talking about sex!  I’m talking about sleeping!  Literally, sleeping with you.  You are the fucking worst person to share a fucking bed with in existence!  I hadn’t slept properly in a month until last night!  You drool, and you snore, and you smother me!  Literally smother me.  When you’re not just draping yourself on top of me.  And I’m honestly surprised you haven’t strangled me to death in your sleep with the force of your so-called ‘cuddling’.  It’s not like you have an easy grip to break.  I have bruises most mornings!  What the hell, Cloud; I don’t want you anywhere _near_ me at night! Excuse me if I was trying to find a nicer way to tell you before you went and _burned down my fucking couch_!”

Oh.

“So you only acted like an asshole because you were trying not to be an asshole.”

Leon stared blankly at Cloud for a second before yanking his arm out of the blonde’s freakishly strong grip.  “Just…go away, Cloud.”

Cloud left.  He ended up spending the rest of the day in mostly the same way he had the day before.  Killing heartless and looking for Sephiroth.  It was nothing like mindless violence to make him feel better about life.  Although, come to think of it, he wasn’t as upset as he should’ve been. He felt like he should be angry, or hurt, but instead he just felt relief.  And then he realised, belatedly, that he hadn’t actually apologised. 

Damn.

~~~

The turn of the latch caught Cloud’s attention, and he straightened up from where he stood slumped against the kitchen counter.  It was late – almost midnight – and Cloud had honestly given up on the idea of Leon coming home a while back.  He'd resigned himself to having to drag his vexed lover home tomorrow, but it seemed like that wasn’t going to need to happen anymore. 

Leon stepped through the door, shutting it softly behind him, and took in the living and kitchen area, before his eyes came to a stop on the new addition. 

“…You got a new couch.” 

Cloud shrugged, but didn’t move from where he stood.  “I stopped by Merlin’s on the way home.  He has more furniture than he needs.  And we needed a new one, anyway.” Leon’s eyes darkened, and he opened his mouth to point out the obvious, but Cloud kept going before he could.  “And I’m sorry I cast firaga on your couch.  Our couch.”

“…Whatever,” Leon replied, rolling his eyes, which Cloud took to mean he was mostly forgiven.  At least for the couch thing.  As for the other, more pressing matter of sharing a bed… Killing heartless and hunting down Sephiroth was also surprisingly good for giving him time to think.  A couch wasn’t the only thing he’d picked up from Merlin’s. 

“You should look in the bedroom.”

Leon raised an eyebrow, but did so, walking past Cloud and swinging open the door to their room. 

“You also got a new bed,” Leon said, turning back to Cloud, eyebrow still raised.  Cloud shrugged. 

“Seemed the most obvious solution.”

“…You’re taking this surprisingly well,” the other man commented, walking back over to Cloud. 

Cloud shrugged.  “Just proving a point.”

“Point?”

“I’m a great roommate.”

Leon snorted.  “You could be worse.”  And then he leaned over and kissed him.  Cloud smirked into it, and then directed Leon back into the bedroom, where they proceeded to christen the new bed.

Cloud found himself shoved out of the bed and onto the floor again when they were done, but as he climbed into the other one, he couldn’t say he minded as much.


End file.
